Research paper on mass media effects

The extent of media influence is of both practical and normative importance. The field of political media effects is interdisciplinary and includes political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, communication scholars, economists, anthropologists, and others. Some of these works, such as Ansolabehere, et al.

Media effects theories[ edit ] Social learning theory[ edit ] Social learning theory originated with Bandura's which suggests that children may learn aggression from viewing others.

Bandura presented children with an Aggressive Model: The model played with 'harmless' tinker toys for a minute or so but then progressed onto the Bobo doll, the model lay the Bobo doll down and was violent towards it; punched its nose, hit it with a mallet, tossed it in the air, and kicked it.

In addition, verbal comments were made in relation. The findings of this experiment suggest that children tended to model the behavior they witnessed in the video. This has been often taken to imply that children may imitate aggressive behaviors witnessed in media. However, Bandura's experiments have been criticized e.

Gauntlett, on several grounds. First, it is difficult to generalize from aggression toward a bo-bo doll which is intended to be hit to person-on-person violence.

Secondly, it may be possible that the children were motivated simply to please the experimenter rather than to be aggressive. In other words, the children may have viewed the videos as instructions, rather than incentives to feel more aggressive.

Third, in a latter study Bandura included a condition in which the adult model was punished for hitting the bo-bo doll by himself being physically punished. Specifically the adult was pushed down in the video by the experimenter and hit with a newspaper while being berated.

This actual person-on-person violence actually decreased aggressive acts in the children, probably due to vicarious reinforcement. Nonetheless these last results indicate that even young children don't automatically imitate aggression, but rather consider the context of aggression.

Given that some scholars estimate that children's viewing of violence in media is quite common, concerns about media often follow social learning theoretical approaches.

The concept of desensitization has particularly gotten much interest from the scholarly community and general public.

It is theorized that with repeated exposure to media violence, a psychological saturation or emotional adjustment takes place such that initial levels of anxiety and disgust diminish or weaken. They were then asked to watch a minute video of real life violence. The students who had played the violent video games were observed to be significantly less affected by a simulated aggressive act than those who didn't play the violent video games.

However the degree to which the simulation was "believable" to the participants, or to which the participants may have responded to "demand characteristics" is unclear see criticisms below. Nonetheless, social cognitive theory was arguably the most dominant paradigm of media violence effects for many years, although it has come under recent criticism e.

Freedman, ; Savage, Recent scholarship has suggested that social cognitive theories of aggression are outdated and should be retired. The catalyst model is a new theory and has not been tested extensively. According to the catalyst model, violence arises from a combination of genetic and early social influences family and peers in particular.

According to this model, media violence is explicitly considered a weak causal influence. Specific violent acts are "catalyzed" by stressful environment circumstances, with less stress required to catalyze violence in individuals with greater violence predisposition.

Some early work has supported this view e. Recent research with inmates has, likewise, provided support for the catalyst model. Moral panic theory[ edit ] A final theory relevant to this area is the moral panic.

Elucidated largely by David Gauntlett[9] this theory postulates that concerns about new media are historical and cyclical. In this view, a society forms a predetermined negative belief about a new medium—typically not used by the elder and more powerful members of the society.

Research studies and positions taken by scholars and politicians tend to confirm the pre-existing belief, rather than dispassionately observe and evaluate the issue.

Eventually the panic dies out after several years or decades, but ultimately resurfaces when yet another new medium is introduced. Criticisms[ edit ] Although organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association have suggested that thousands according to the AAP of studies have been conducted confirming this link, others have argued that this information is incorrect.

Rather, only about two hundred studies confirmed by meta-analyses such as Paik and Comstock, have been conducted in peer-reviewed scientific journals on television, film, music and video game violence effects.

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Critics argue that about half find some link between media and subsequent aggression but not violent crimewhereas the other half do not find a link between consuming violent media and subsequent aggression of any kind. Traditionally, researchers have selected one violent game and one non-violent game, yet shown little consideration of the potentially different responses to these games as a result of differences in other game characteristics e.

Failure to acknowledge the role of social contexts in which media violence is experienced. Within theoretical models explaining the influence of violent video game exposure on aggressive attitudes and behaviour, no acknowledgement is made towards understanding the influence of social gaming experiences and contexts on these outcomes.

Existing theoretical models assume that the outcomes of gaming are equivalent, regardless of these different contexts.Preliminary versions of economic research. Did Consumers Want Less Debt? Consumer Credit Demand Versus Supply in the Wake of the Financial Crisis.

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The studies of violence in mass media analyzes the degree of correlation between themes of violence in media sources (particularly violence in video games, television and films) with real-world aggression and violence over caninariojana.com social scientists support the correlation.

Research on the effects of violence in mass media - Wikipedia

However, some scholars argue that media research has methodological problems and that findings are exaggerated.(Ferguson. All listed papers are published after full consent of respective author or co-author(s). For any discussion on research subject or research matter, the reader should directly contact to undersigned authors.